


Maferath Redeemed

by Morgenleoht



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Child Abandonment, Child Death, Emotional Trauma, Graphic Description of Corpses, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Imprisonment, Mage-Templar War, Multi, Mutilation, Past Child Abuse, Sex Work, Slavery, Snark, Swearing, Torture, War Crimes, Wrongful Imprisonment, desecration of corpses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 22:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13200174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgenleoht/pseuds/Morgenleoht
Summary: It isn't every day that the fate of the world rests in the hands of a murderer who masqueraded as a Warden. Thom Rainier needs to stop Thedas from flying apart even as he's reviled as the worst traitor to the faith since Maferath. They're probably right but he won't let that stop him from defeating the true killer of the Divine.In another world, Mara Cousland might have been a Hero of Ferelden. But magic came to her hand and sent her to the Circles, where the mages stew under the templars' rule. Now she fights to protect the children and apprentices under her charge as the rebellion hurtles into oblivion, intent on taking Thedas with it so long as the templars die.As Varric Tethras says, "I couldn't make this shit up if I wanted to."





	Maferath Redeemed

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Thanks for reading and reviewing. Trigger warning for death, violence, fantastic racism, torture, imprisonment, sex work, mutilation, desecration of corpses, slavery, child abuse/neglect/abandonment, and mentions of war crimes, child death, rape/non-con and emotional trauma. Rewrite of ‘The Redemption of Maferath’ I did under the name Morninglight; I can’t get Thom/Blackwall as Inquisitor out of my head. AU Mara Cousland from ‘Hymns Between Sea and Sky’. NPCs will also have more agency in this as people who are more than capable of making their own decisions.

 

When Thom Rainier decided to escort some mages to the Conclave under the name of a dead man, he never expected to wake up in a Chantry dungeon with a left hand that sparked green-black and the point of Cassandra Pentaghast’s silverite sword at his throat just under the beard. The olive-skinned woman was furious, her handsome scarred features twisted into a rage so primal that he was surprised he was permitted to wake up at all. In the shadows, little more than a flash of silverite chainmail and Dales Loden wool, watched the Left Hand of the Divine. This was… not good.

            “Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now,” the Right Hand of the Divine said, her sword-point drawing a bead of scarlet blood. “The Divine is dead. Everyone is dead. The Temple of Sacred Ashes is destroyed and only you survive. Why is that, Warden-Constable Blackwall?”

            Thom swallowed past the pain and decided to die an honest man. “My name isn’t Blackwall. My name is Thom Rainier. He died fighting darkspawn and I-I took his name.”

            Cassandra snarled. “Murderous child-killing filth!”

            “Yes, I am,” Thom admitted. “But whatever happened at the Temple, I can’t remember. I wish I could, Seeker. I’d confess and die shriven.”

            “You remember nothing?” Leliana’s soft dulcet tones, lilting and sweet as only an Orlesian bard’s could be, cut through the tension.

“Green light… and a woman?” Thom said nothing about the shambling corpses wearing the faces and clothing of those he’d failed and betrayed.

            “A woman?” Leliana stepped into the light, touching Cassandra’s arm lightly. “We need him.”

            She reluctantly pulled her sword away. “Explain the mark on your hand.”

            Despite his circumstances, Thom scowled at the Seeker. “Didn’t I just bloody say I don’t remember anything and I’d tell you if I could?”

            “I find it hard to believe.” Cassandra nodded to the six Fereldan guards, who sheathed their own swords and stepped away. “Leliana, bring the ropes.”

            Six-stranded silk smeared with the sharp reek of magebane. “I’m no mage,” Thom protested.

            “But that mark on your hand _is_ magic,” Leliana said, removing the iron shackles and deftly knotting the ropes around his wrists. Thom didn’t bother trying to escape. Leliana could probably kill him with a nail paring.

            “Lovely. So the Divine’s dead and the Temple of Sacred Ashes is destroyed, I have a magic mark on my hand, and I’m no doubt off to a painful execution.” Thom sighed heavily as Cassandra hauled him to his feet. Maker’s balls, the woman was strong! “A fitting end for the likes of me, I suppose.”

            “You can’t die just yet,” Cassandra said harshly. “Not until you see what has happened.”

            Dragged out of the Chantry, Thom was first faced with the abuse of an angrily grieving crowd and all the rotten vegetables they could muster. Then the mark on his hand sparked again and he fell to his knees, looking up involuntarily at the sky.

            It was a beautiful winter’s day in the Frostbacks, the sky blue as Andraste’s eyes and the snow bright as Her robe. Except… there was a maelstrom in the sky, green-black and spitting bilious bolts that exploded against the mountains.

            “Maker’s balls,” he breathed.

            “This happened after the explosion,” the Seeker continued flatly. “A breach in the sky. Demons fall from it and kill dozens every hour. And only you were found wandering in the ruins of the Temple.”

            “I don’t remember a thing,” Thom repeated for the third time. “I remember going into the hall and that’s it.”

            “Well, _murderer_ , it’s possible you were the tool for a maleficar,” Cassandra grudgingly conceded. “Who better to assassinate Most Holy than a man who cut down children?”

            “I never knew Callier brought his kids with him,” Thom said weakly. “I expected the General and his troops.”

            “And yet when the deed was discovered, you ran and let your men take the fall.” Cassandra’s voice was thick with contempt as she hauled him to his feet. “Come. Let us take you to make what penance you can.”

            The crowd jeered as he was pulled through it and once they were past the gate, Cassandra cut the silk bonds. “Don’t go for a weapon or I will cut you down like the mad dog you are.”

            Thom nodded simply. He wasn’t afraid to die. He was afraid to fail.

            They’d just reached the centre of the bridge when a bolt from the sky struck, breaking the stone arch in two. They fell to the frozen river below and Thom remembered enough of his training to go limp. So when the demons attacked, he was mostly unbruised.

            “Stay back!” Cassandra yelled as she drew her sword.

            Thom would have obeyed except that a shade bubbled out of the ground between him and the Seeker, forcing him to grab a discarded sword and templar’s shield. By the time he’d beaten the demon to death with more desperation than skill, Cassandra was pulling her sword out of the shade she’d engaged with the smooth grace of long experience.

            She turned around and held out her blade. “Drop your weapon. Now!”

            Thom lowered the sword and shield. “Alright, Seeker.”

            She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “ _Wait._ I may not be able to protect you. But if you arrive at the forward camp without me, Leliana will cut you down at first sight.”

            “Understood, Seeker.”

            They battled their way past more demons until they came to a small group of soldiers, including a bald elven male and a dwarf with a crossbow, fighting off shades falling from a smaller version of the Breach. Thom waded in, barking orders instinctively, and the fighters finished off the creatures. Before he could react, the elf grabbed his marked hand and put it up to the rift, producing an emerald whip of light. The fissure exploded and Thom staggered back from the recoil.

            “So, you can close the Rifts,” the mage said with some satisfaction.

            “Good. I was thinking we’d be ass-deep in demons forever,” observed the dwarf dryly.

            Thom looked at his palm. “So this fucking thing is useful for something. Good.”

            “There is a connection,” the elf said with a frown. “As to what… I don’t yet know despite my observations.”

            “Solas is an apostate,” Cassandra said, wiping shade ichor from her sword. “He kept you alive.”

            “Thanks, I guess,” Thom told Solas. “Plenty of others might curse you for it though.”

            “You are the key to our salvation,” Solas said simply.

            “That’s only if it works on the big one,” the dwarf noted. “So, Blackwall, how’d you go from heroic Warden to suspected mass-murderer?”

            “I’m not a hero or a Warden,” Thom growled. “My real name is Thom Rainier.”

            “Well, shit.” The dwarf scratched his scarred nose. “That’s a plot twist I wasn’t expecting.”

            “None of us were, Varric,” Cassandra pointed out. “Go to the forward camp.”

            “Only if we’re going with you,” Varric (had to be the famous author) countered. “The sky’s shitting demons and you’ll need us both.”

            “Having a pair of ranged fighters will help us,” Thom told Cassandra. “I may be a child-killer but I know warfare. We need them.”

            “Fine,” Cassandra conceded with ill grace. “Let’s get to the forward camp.”

            It was a literal uphill battle to the forward camp with another rift on the way. Once they were past the gates, Thom heard Leliana arguing with a man in the neat white and red robes of a Chantry cleric. “Roderick,” Cassandra said disgustedly. “Of all the petty time-serving bureaucrats to survive.”

            “Yippee,” Varric muttered. Solas simply shook his head.

            Roderick, an older man with the aristocratic features of an Orlesian and the accent of a Fereldan nobleman, was already giving orders for Thom to be chained for transport to Val Royeaux as they strode up to the table. The guards looked uncertainly between him, Leliana and Cassandra.

            “No,” Leliana informed the Chancellor. “He must be taken to the Breach.”

            “He caused the Breach!” Roderick countered.

            “We have no choice and you have no right to command us,” Cassandra said bluntly.

            “I am the highest-ranking cleric left alive and you are a thug, albeit one who serves the Chantry!” he spat in response.

            “You are a jumped-up clerk!”

            “Will the pair of you shut up?” Thom bellowed. “I won’t live long enough to get to this fucking Breach if you two keep arguing!”

            “He has a point,” Cassandra said grimly.

            “You’ll rue this,” Roderick warned.

            “I generally do.” Cassandra pointedly turned her back on the Chancellor and looked to Thom. “We have no choice but to join Commander Cullen and charge through to the Temple.”

            “We could take the old mining shafts,” Leliana suggested. “There were scouts lost that way.”

            Thom closed his eyes. “Which is the shortest route to the Temple?”

            “The gates ahead of us,” Leliana said softly.

            “How many men are engaged there and how many scouts were sent out?”

            “We have about sixty men fighting the rift between here and the Temple under the command of Cullen,” the Left Hand responded. “There are about ten scouts missing.”

            Thom sighed. Ten casualties versus sixty. “I won’t sacrifice sixty men to save ten. I say we charge.”

…

“I’m guessing that explosion means the Conclave was a failure.”

            Grand Enchanter Fiona sounded more weary and sad than surprised. The bulk of the civilian mages were clustered together in Redcliffe Village with more breaking off each day to go fight the templars or bully the churls. Fiona was doing nothing to stop them and as the daughter and sister of Teyrns, Mara Cousland was ready to throttle the older elven woman. The renegades did nothing but prove the templar fanatics correct.

            “We better get an evacuation plan in motion,” she told the leader of the rebels. “The children, apprentices and elder mages will be safer in the mountains and sure as mabari shit on shoes, someone will blame us for it.”

            “What’s the point?” Fiona asked bitterly. “All hope for peace has died.”

            _While you let the Libertarians fuck off and take food from the churls, which only aggravates the rogue templars into abusing the churls, it certainly looks that way._ “One thing I learned in the Blight was that until you go kicking and screaming down an archdemon’s throat, there’s still hope. Let me take the non-combatants and Tranquil to the mountains. There’s a few old fortresses up there I can convert into a home for winter.”

            “Why do you care about the Tranquil?” Linnea, one of the Ostwick apprentices, demanded. Mara had the feeling she was the one who murdered the loyalist First Enchanter Lydia but didn’t dare press the issue.

            “Someone has to,” she replied.

            “Mara has a point,” Fiona agreed. “Take Ellendra and Connor with you. If you can’t manage a dozen youngsters with those two, you don’t have the right to call yourself a Senior Enchanter.”

            She nodded, not trusting her temper to speak. Enchanter Ellendra was a solid, sensible woman in her early forties, the third-best Spirit Healer in the Circles behind the recently deceased Wynne and the possessed Anders. Connor Guerrin, while welcomed by his uncle Teagan, only aggravated the villagers who remembered the possessed boy’s massacre of their families. Mara herself was a Senior Enchanter, more by dint of being the only Knight-Enchanter in Ferelden than any especial talent for politics. “I know where to go. When everything dies down, I’ll send a wisp to let you know where we are.”

            The Circles were dead, rent in blood and fire by the pride and power of a few, and the templars run amok without the Seekers to bring them to heel. With this explosion and the tear in the sky, Mara wanted to think of the children first and the rebellion second. Fiona’s refusal to compromise and Lord Seeker Lambert’s fanaticism led to this.

            _I wish Delrin Barris wasn’t in Orlais,_ she thought. _Or Cullen Rutherford gone to serve the Chantry more directly. Both were always reasonable for templars._

            “We’ll leave tonight,” she said. “The fewer people who know, the better.”

            Fiona had been a Warden. She understood necessity. “So be it. I wish you had more faith in the rebellion, Mara.”

            “I wish I did too.” Mara regarded the slight woman with her grey-black hair grimly. “But too many have abused their power and freedom.”

            “Is that the Senior Enchanter or the Fereldan noblewoman talking?” Linnea demanded.

            Mara looked at the girl. “Both.”

            Before anyone could say anything else, she went looking for Ellendra and Connor. It would take a few hours to round up the mage-born children, the apprentices and the older folk willing to make a trek into the mountains. Mara also dispatched a message to Arl Teagan to let him know the strain on his village would be easing. Anora had practically forced the mages on the last Guerrin as she didn’t dare with Fergus, who sat in Highever and waited for King Cailan’s widow to die.

            It was just past nightfall when the motley group left the village. The sky was weirdly green to the west and Connor, most sensitive to the Fade because of his prior possession, was shivering. “Something’s wrong,” the young man kept on saying. “Something’s very wrong.”

            Mara realised how correct he was when she encountered the first rift just outside the Crossroads. Ellendra and Connor were both lousy battlemages, so it was left to her to drive away the wraiths long enough for everyone to escape. Even so, three of the children were struck by wraith-bolt and became so weak they needed to be carried.

            Mages were fighting templars in and around Fort Connor. That left Jacen’s Ride, to the deep south where the Arling met the bannorn of Lothering and the Arling of West Hills, as their only option. It was a good defensible place but isolated from the trade routes. Mara had to keep her people away from renegades and churls for as long as possible.

            Several templars and mages clashed over the Crossroads as an umber-skinned woman in a Revered Mother’s robes shielded her flock. Mara swore viciously and called down Chain Lightning on the combatants until they were dead, each casting in between lyrium potions handed to her by Ellendra. What in the name of Andraste was _wrong_ with these people?

            “We should help them,” Ellendra said tentatively.

            “Do you think the Revered Mother’s a reasonable one?” Mara asked tiredly.

            “It’s worth a shot,” Ellendra replied. “We can’t go on much further.”

            Mara took a deep breath and nodded. “No unsanctioned magic. Just healing and potions.”

            “Agreed.”

            They picked their way into the Crossroads, hands held up in the air with their fists clenched in the classic mage sign of peace. Watching children as young as six make the sign broke Mara’s heart a little more. Magic was dangerous but children shouldn’t have to live in fear.

            “Praise Andraste,” the Revered Mother said in a soft, rough Orlesian accent. “Are you fleeing the rebels?”  
            “Something like that,” Mara admitted. “Could you use some help?”

            “If you have any healers, please,” the cleric said gratefully. “I won’t turn away any aid.”

            Mara busied herself with making elfroot potions as Ellendra, Connor and the best healers among the apprentices did what they could to help the refugees. They were cold, sick and hungry. The resident healer had been killed by a templar while searching for herbs. “Blood lotus and elfroot to ease the pain,” Mother Giselle explained with a sigh. “Spindleweed for common sickness.”

            “I’ve never seen blood lotus used in anything other than poisons,” Mara confessed as she strained boiled water through pieces of elfroot in a clean muslin bag.

            “We Orlesians have a few tricks you Fereldans don’t,” Giselle said gently. “How long can you stay?”

            “Not long. If the templars are attacking people who help us or have been helped…” Mara echoed the cleric’s sigh. “I honestly wish the fanatics of both sides would kill each other and let the rest of us find a way to peace. But that explosion in the Frostbacks and the tear in the sky that seems to be making smaller ones…”

            Giselle used words not in keeping with the dignity of her station, startling Mara into an exhausted laugh. “I must send ravens to Val Royeaux and Haven. Surely someone has survived.”

            “Good luck getting the Grand Clerics to do anything,” Mara said sourly, bottling a potion.

            “If the Left and Right Hands of the Divine survived, they’ll get things started,” Giselle assured her. “Divine Justinia was planning to intervene directly in the crisis. I’ve even heard rumours she was planning to call for a new Inquisition.”

            Mara nearly dropped the potion. “A new Inquisition? The last ones became the fucking Seekers and look what happened to them!”

            Giselle regarded her sympathetically. “I understand your concern. But have faith. The dawn will come.”

            “Faith’s half the problem,” Mara said as she returned to the potions. “I can have hope but don’t ask me for faith. Faith led to this mess in the first place.”


End file.
